Dana White, UFC fearful about PFL-Bellator merger, says Donn Davis

PFL founder Donn Davis is certain he’s caught the eye of UFC CEO Dana White along with his promotion’s newest transfer.

Davis believes the discuss of PFL buying Bellator, which was lastly made official Monday, has been worrying White and the UFC. With the complete roster of Bellator fighters at its disposal, the deal has the potential to shake up the MMA business in a serious approach.

“Everyone is aware of Dana properly sufficient that he solely dismisses issues that fear him, or else he simply doesn’t remark,” Davis stated on “The MMA Hour.” “He didn’t touch upon the PFL for 4 years as a result of he wasn’t fearful. He has commented on the PFL loads within the final six months. He’s fearful.”

Bellator and PFL competed for a number of years, with every promotion claiming to be No. 2 within the business behind UFC. Nevertheless, now mixed, Davis believes that argument now not holds. He believes the PFL-Bellator merger places them as “co-leaders” with the UFC.

“What particularly fearful him about Bellator is the metrics that we placed on the press launch,” Davis defined. “Thirty % of that roster is ranked within the high 25 of Combat Matrix rankings. This isn’t ‘Dana will get to rank his personal guys. Donn is rankings his personal guys.’ As you already know, there’s just one group rating all fighters independently – Combat Matrix. Thirty % of the UFC roster is high 25 ranked, and now our mixed firm of PFL and Bellator is 30 %. The identical.

“Now, to UFC’s credit score, in the event you have a look at the highest 5 on this planet, they nonetheless personal the highest 5 one by means of 5. So referred to as pay-per-view playing cards, we couldn’t compete with them proper now, which is why we’re solely going to have two, they usually have 12. However in the event you say I’m turning on TV on ESPN Saturday evening, or I’m going to tune in Friday evening to look at this Bellator Worldwide Collection or PFL, our playing cards are going to be higher.”